Breast cancer, fibrotic signalling, and development of atrial fibrillation

Paracrine mechanisms underlying risk of atrial fibrosis and atrial fibrillation in breast cancer patients Atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common cardiac arrhythmia, has a complex etiology.While advanced age and obesity are among the top risk factors for the development of AF, many aging related conditions (hypertension, heart failure, sleep apnea, cancer, etc.) are also associated with AF risk.C-reactive protein (CRP) levels are a sensitive but non-specific marker of systemic inflammation.In 2001, our group was the first to document an association of plasma CRP with the incidence and persistence of AF 1 .Patients with AF had 2-fold higher levels of CRP than those without AF, and CRP levels were higher in patients with persistent than paroxysmal AF.These data suggested that CRP reflects an inflammatory state that promotes AF persistence by inducing structural remodeling of the atria.In a letter to the editor in response to our study 2 , Guzzetti and colleagues reported a 3x higher frequency of AF in